7 Tips to Avoid getting Unfollowed on Twitter

I have been asked several twitter related questions in the last few days by my readers and friends. I have finally decided to answer them accordingly. However, the most catchy and important question was (according to me) “how to avoid getting unfollowed on twitter”. This is a popular topic so I decided to do my own research and come out with a few simple tips to help you solve this problem.

You might be wondering why your twitter followers are decreasing every day. There are tons of reasons you can find online but today, I will give a few most common reasons and seven tips to help you avoid getting unfollowed on twitter.

When you are following lots of people on twitter and expecting them to follow back, at least do it right. Following others to increase followers is a very common method to increase twitter followers. However, it is pointless to mass follow hundreds of users and have few to zero following back. This makes you very unpopular. I use a twitter tool called tweet adder which is awesome for twitter automation. You can use it to follow / unfollow twitter users and do lots more. Check it out and let me know what you think.

So, without further ado, I am posting seven most common reasons for being unfollowed on twitter and how you can avoid it.

Tips to Avoid Getting Unfollowed on Twitter

1. Stop Spamming and bragging about your blog posts

Most of us have blogs and use twitter as a marketing tool to let people know the latest on our blogs. We also link the blog posts in our tweets which is the most common practice. Tweeples (twitter users) appreciate when you tweet about something important that will benefit twitter users as a whole. But linking the same post many times in a day is seriously considered spam and will make you lose followers instantly. Stop that now. Share only when you have something awesome to share. You do not want to fill the entire twitter timeline with your links. Give others a chance. Try to retweet some popular and useful posts. Your followers do not always want to see your tweets. They will also appreciate if you retweet other’s tweet.

2. Tweet Simple and Keep it Clean

Do not curse anyone or use obscene expressions in you tweets. People follow you because they are interested in what you have got to offer. Show respect and gain respect. Doing the dirty thing will definitely jeopardize your twitter account as well as your followers count.

Sometimes profanity is a part of your personality and I have nothing against that. Some people use profanity in the sense of humor such as comedians, critiques, bloggers etc. In such cases, it’s just fine. Don’t do it just because you saw @shitmydadsays do it.

3. Avoid Tweeting about your Followers Count

All of us enjoy reaching milestones in twitter. Do not ever tweet about the number of followers you have. Do not brag on the list and the celebrities that are following you. This does more worse than good in terms of the followers count. I don’t see any reason why you should brag about followers. Always keep it real and take it easy.

4. Tweets are not for link sharing

I sincerely request people (at least my readers) not to tweet JUST links. You don’t expect people to just click on your links without knowing where the links will take them. It might not be spam but that is how it’s looked at. Twitter supports 140 characters per message and I believe that the space is sufficient for adding a title to your link. No one is bothered to click on links without knowing what it is.

Remember, you tweet for people and not for BOTS. Twitter is called a microblog and is so much powerful because you can reach out to your audience with a single tweet. Try to maintain a friendly relationship with your followers and even send some personal tweets to them. This makes them feel special and lets them know that you care. Try to start a conversation or tweet some useful stuff that you believe will help your followers solve some problems. Creating a good long lasting relationship with your followers can lead them to retweet your tweets and make them go viral.

6. Twitter is not an Online Game

I know its fun to tweet about every single thing you do every day, NOT :). Never use twitter as if you are playing a game. Do not tweet hundred times a day. It is always disturbing to see a single person occupy the entire timeline. Personally, I always unfollow the person who floods my twitter timeline with tons of tweets every day. This is because I miss out lots of other useful tweets. Remember, your number of tweets do not count; it’s the quality and the value of your tweets that matter.

7. RT: Retweeting is good to a certain extent

Retweeting is a good practice and is encouraged too. When you share an informative tweet, it helps your followers. But using twitter is much more than just retweeting. You need to share your opinions, ideas and thoughts in your twitter and not just always retweet some other random ideas or posts you find online. Make sure that you contribute to this social media because your followers are hungry for information; the ratio of your tweets to retweets should be always more.

Verdict

There are other professional twitter users and experts who might have different point of views and if you are one of them, then feel free to contribute to this post. I will write more posts regarding twitter followers, tips and tools that will benefit my readers but for now I can guarantee that if you strictly follow the seven rules I have mentioned above, you will make it impossible for others to unfollow you on twitter.

this is totally perfect tips for me , it's come at the right time when i need to improve my twitter . i have one question my friend , if you are saying about ” twitter is not for link sharing ” so how about for blogger , what is the real feature that blogger can use from twitter

http://salmanahsan.com S Ahsan

Hey Earningstep,

Posting random links on twitter simply doesnt make sense. If you go through my tips again, i have mentioned that random links could be annoying and hardly anyone would bother to click or check it out. If your post is informative or you would like to promote a legit stuff then at least mention it in the tweet. Twitter gives you 140 characters and that is enough to include a title for a link. if you are tweeting your latest blog post then you could write something like “New Blog post- 7 tips for twitter!- <link url>” . Hope i have clarified

I agree with you on all points listed here. I don't like to see every single post of a blog to be retweeted (eg Twitterfeed). But what's the limit of the following count? I mean about a certian number (500/1000?) it's completely useless to follow more people.

http://www.r4-revolution.co.uk/ nintendo r4ds

If you unfollow somebody on twitter would that person like get something saying they were unfollowed?

sharonhayes

I suggest also adding not sending auto-dms or spam dms to people to this list… or for that matter dming anything that can't be shared in a public tweet.

http://salmanahsan.com S Ahsan

Hey Christian, I have checked your twitter profile. Its not that bad. There is no limit for following on twitter. You can follow as much as you want but it wont make sense if you follow people who are not connected to you or do not fall in your niche. I guess you know what i mean. If you are a football player, you would want to be followed by football players or people who are interested in this field. In other words, you want targeted twitter followers. Now the question is how do you increase your followers? Well until or unless you are popular, you wont have tons of users following. You need to follow more at first in order to gain followers because lots of people return the favor by following back. I am working on a post where i will include my best twitter tools and apps which are not only amazing but tough to discover on the net unless you are googles best friend ;). Stay tuned, subscribe and i will get back soon

http://salmanahsan.com S Ahsan

Thanks for asking the question! No, they will not receive any sorts of alert when unfollowed. Well at least for the time being because you never know, twitter might come up with that idea and implement it. You can see how they are developing this platform; the recent is twitter list. I will be posting some amazing twitter tools to automate twitter related tasks; I will include several new twitter tools which will be new or havent been discovered yet by many. Stay tuned!

http://salmanahsan.com S Ahsan

Superb! Yes, i knew this and would have added it to my list but I wouldnt say that dms are bad as long as you do it right. You can simply send a welcome message but its boring now because as a matter of fact, its misused – SPAM is the term! Well, i am thinking about including dms to my list thank you for reminding me!

titaniumtex

Tweeting that you just lst your coffee cup or used the toilet is a “do NOT do!”

http://twitter.com/gearoidin GMT

Helpful tips!

http://twitter.com/ThatPJ PJ Edwards

@shitmydadsays destroys the #2 rule. Just sayin'

http://twitter.com/Zarazarathustra Frederich

I don't know about you, but I get these incessant DM invites to play tribe wars or mafia wars or vote on some nonsense poll or some other contrivance. And I don't think that a lot of these people even realize that they're enabling this. I don't mind an occasional legitimate request for something, but these generic spams clog my DM inbox.

http://salmanahsan.com S Ahsan

First of all, think why people use twitter. Everyone has various reasons. Some of us are trying to reach our audience while some are trying best to increase followers and spam with affiliate links to make few bucks. Whenever you follow someone, you are most likely to receive a DM and most of the DMs contain affiliated links or personal sites. I would not do that. Its courteous to send a welcome message and if you cant do that then its better not to send any. Twitter is a powerful social media and your tweets are visible to the whole world until or unless you secure it. Its not just some cheap money making machine or game.

lauradinka

yeah… I'm new in twitter and already got three messages about that tribe game; don't think I like it; but I guess these things happens if you have a public address found the post very useful, thanks!! (and btw, found it on twitter:)

http://salmanahsan.com S Ahsan

I am glad the post was useful to you. Twitter will definitely work on the DMs; they are developing several new features and i believe this will be sorted out soon. Internet is a public domain and you will receive spams forever. Its better to learn about it and know how to deal with it.

http://www.adhustler.com/ Ad Hustler

I definitely agree with these tips. There is a fine line between using your twitter account to help your brand and being annoying.

debmills

Thanks for sharing your tips. Here are a couple of mine, “Commonsense helps to make you a good tweeter. Also, “With a little patience and practice, you'll be in Twitter heaven.”Mahalo,DearDeb

yuriyko

The correct article! Excellent!

http://www.mastermindblogger.com S Ahsan

Appreciate it! If you need any reviews or details, feel free to ask! cheers

I tweet for a child care agency. To be safe, I will block anyone who doesnt provide a location in their profile information. If they can't tell me where they are, then I am not interested in following them (or have them follow us!).

http://www.mastermindblogger.com S Ahsan

Well you can do that.. But people can easily put up any address and you wouldn't know if its a bot or an active person. You can protect your tweets if you want to be careful; this allows you to manually accept the people who want to follow you and only your followers get to see your tweets.

jonnymag

On the one hand, having a lot of un-follows might mean that I”m not connecting with my followers.

On the other hand, if I worried too much about how many follows and un-follows I had on a day-to-day basis, it might just mean that I'm a little too caught up in receiving external validation to actually be engaged in a relationship with my followers.

http://www.mastermindblogger.com S Ahsan

You shouldnt be worried about getting unfollowed. The fact is that people tend to unfollow those who are annoying. Like those who spam or tweet irrelevant stuffs. If you are busy and not able to tweet or connect with your followers, i think people can understand that. As long as you bring value to your community, they will stick with you.

timbrownson

I dunno about 2, but to explain what I mean I have to sound like an arrogant asshat.

I hardly ever lose followers that I am following back. I bet it's less than 1 per week. yet I regularly swear. It's who I am and it's usually to make a comedic point and not abusive per se.

I know some people wont like it and it's the same with my blog, but the fact is it's part of life and they can move on.

OTOH maybe I'd have 100,000 followers of I didn't swear and I could then violate rule #3 and brag about it!

http://ladytraffic.com/ Natalie

Thanks for this post. It is common sens but it's good to be reminded of those things. I often lost some followers for tweets I though were very good. But we have to remember we are tweeting for them and not for us.

You can count on him for great adviceSalman Ahsan is great to work with and has extensive knowledge on social media and online marketing for businesses. He is also very trustworthy and loyal. You can count on him for great advice to help get your online presence going in the right direction.

Waheed AdegbiteThe Illuminated Ventures Project

About Salman Ahsan

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